Bklyn Sounds: 2/14/2023 - 2/20/2023 + A Personalized Guide to NYC Live Music Listings

What to Bookmark if You're Unsubscribing + Shows: "Donuts Are Forever 17" / Ash Lauryn + The AM + Jadalareign / François K + Toribio / DrumsNButta + Bridge Bass Quartet / Julius Rodriguez and more...

OK, this time for real. This is the final week that Bklyn Sounds will be outside the Dada Strain paywall. 

One main reason I hadn’t done it yet is that I didn’t want to leave the folks who will choose not to subscribe without alternatives. Everybody should have resources for finding great live music events in New York City. Yes, I like to think that what I do has a special nuance worth supporting — a specific point of view about may be “good’ (whatever that means) or “fun” (whatever that means) or “interesting” (ditto), plus occasional discounts to shows (thus far: Winter Jazzfest marathon, Roulette’s Mixology festival, “Assembly” at Sisters, more coming) and other subscriber-only offers. But I also treasure Bklyn Sounds as a service for people who may care about NYC live music and culture, and simply need a new direction for their exploration, but can not afford the $5 a month subscription. (Trust that I am with you, and that one reason for this newsletter’s cost is my personal survival in the capitalist-as-f*ck world.)

Which all leads to my desire to create this public post, a small resource list set for folks who can not follow Dada Strain’s Bklyn Sounds behind the paywall but still wanna know what’s going on. So, here’s a short list: public platforms and sites, a couple of private social feeds, variations of Bklyn Sounds-like curation, all are great resources for those looking to do some NYC musicking:

• Jim Macnie’s “Lament For a Straight Line” blog is one of my favorite NYC “jazz” reads. Not simply because Jim is a friend, colleague and smart listener, but because as a one-time Village Voice music listings editor, his old shit is what I try to emulate. And his new shit is banging as well.

• DJ Tara’s IG Stories is an excellent place to find out about Brooklyn dance parties, that are DJ’d by humans with personal taste and perspective, and are at independent spots not corporate mega-clubs. (Though when somebody banging is at one of those, Tara’s not above mentioning it.) Also: Tara is one of my favorite DJs in the city, but you already know that. 

• Steve Silverstein’s weekly FB recommendations are musically eclectic as heck, often veering on the side of indie, noise and free improvisation. Steve’s an excellent music engineer who has been performing in and recording bands for a long time, so he knows about what’s going down off-the-radar. I also see him out A TON. A true NYC musicker. 

• Tapped In Live is a listings app, but a pretty great one. Dan, one of the folks behind it, reached out to me soon after I restarted publishing Bklyn Sounds, and introduced me to it. It has some big shows, but is great at sorting through a Brooklyn- and jazz-heavy schedule, always leading with the small, independent clubs.

• NYC Noise is one of the grand old listings sites that is thankfully still going strong. Also heavy on the DIY, and, as the name suggests, the loud and the distorted — guitars, saxophones, soundsystems, whatever. It’s especially great at telling you what’s going on in the pop-up spaces and Ridgewood bars you and I have never heard of.  

• NYC Jazz Record is not just a listing spot, it’s a full-blown monthly “gazette,” filled with articles and reviews, as well as a huge amount of jazz-related information. Because it prints monthly, it often misses the smaller, quickly-put-together shizz. But its list of shows at clubs and institutions is great. And its album reviews section pursues more records than any other jazz reviews section I know of. (Even if the writing and opinions are hit-or-miss.)

• RA Guide: New York has to be mentioned for the dance heads, if somewhat sadly. Why am I hating, especially since I post links to it on the regular? Because RA is a ticketing platform — that’s eaten up much of global club-land (though based on Dice.FM’s appetite, the trough may be getting crowded) — masquerading as an editorial platform. That said, even though RA’s editorial picks are mostly basic and/or business-driven, almost everyone lists their gigs here, so if you need a boogie, you will definitely find it. Just choose wisely. (And if anyone has a better all-in dance-music guide for the city, I am here for it…)

I will try to publish guides like this semi-regularly. Still I hope you all continue to subscribe to Dada Strain, and maybe even upgrade your subscription. 

This week’s shows:

A wonderful double-bill of soulful creative music at Williamsburg’s great Shift space: the Bridge Bass Quartet features four of fair Gotham’s best improvising bass players — Che Chen, Dave Hoffstra, William Parker and Dave Sewelson — and DrumsNButta, the rotating band assembled by the mighty time-keeper Tcheser Holmes. On this night, DNB will be a killer quintet featuring Ava Mendoza (guitar), Gabby Fluke Mogul (violin), Tomin (woodwinds) and Bob Bruya (bass). Guaranteed to swing with a weird funky step. (Wed 2/15, 7:30p @ Shift 411 Kent Ave. Williamsburg - $15)

After last year’s Verve debut, Let Sound Tell All, much of the jazz world has already decided that pianist Julius Rodriguez is a star. Which is prolly true. But one great part of watching the 24 year-old Westechester-born prodigy continue to play all around NYC is to see who’ll join him. Lunatico hasn’t listed his trio for Thursday, and based on past experiences, folks like Meshell Ndegeocello or members of the Onyx Collective crew aren’t outside the realm of possibility. I also wouldn’t put it past Orange Julius to bring some singers. Get there early to get in. (Thurs 2/16, 9p & 10:15p @ Bar Lunatico 486 Halsey St. Bed-Stuy - $10suggested) 

Jadalareign’s Nowadays residency provides a very special new-generation Detroit techno treat: the Teasley sisters, Ashleigh and Ann-Marie, better known by their DJ/production names Ash Lauryn is and The AM playing together. Ash’s Underground & Black show (on NTS and elsewhere) is a staple of great current+classic dance music. The AM’s debut EP on Tresor last year is a heater. Can’t imagine this won’t be a sweaty good time. (Fri 2/17, 10p @ Nowadays Ridgewood - $25)

The Capriccio parties, helmed by the excellent DJ Alex From Queens, have been a lovely staple of the city’s techno underground for the better part of a decade. Always quality music (the harder, deeper side), always a crowd gathered for the sonic action and movement. Capriccio returns with an incredible bill, featuring DJ sets from the forever slept-on techno minimalist Traxx, Alex and Camille BWR  and live sets by the mighty Black Meteoric Star (Rayna!!!!) and SSPS debuting music from his new LP on the great (Traxx-run) Nation label. (Fri 2/17, 10p @ seCret loCation, Greenpoint-ish? - $30) 

A recommendation based on associations and gut-check. I am new to the work of multi-disciplinarian S*an D. Henry-Smith, poet-photographer-performance-artist whose memoir-like short, Flotsam Suite, consists of prose poetry and images, and carries the Dada Strain-friendly subtitle, how we chronicled the little disasters & i won't leave the dance floor til it's out of my system. Their musical identity, sunchoke, has a Saturday afternoon performance at the excellent 47 Canal gallery, and features collaborations with three incredible music-meets-art-minded locals, Justin Allen, Yulan Grant (SHYBOI), and Taja Cheek (L’Rain). (Sat 2/18, 4p @ 47 Canal 251 Grand St. Manhattan - FREE)

A double-bill of jazz drummers who came to NYC and became great DJs/producers. François K is a New York legend, a don going back to the days of Studio 54, though even that shorts him. (Seriously, if you don’t know, look him up!). And Cesar Toribio is a don in the making, who can push a dance-floor in many different directions. At the brand-new Bushwick club Silo — which I am both excited for, and a little afraid of. We shall see…. (Sat. 2/18, 10p @ SILO Brooklyn 90 Scott Ave. Bushwick - $28.33)

The annual Dilla anniversary tribute comes out of the lockdown virtual and back to IRL, at Market Hotel. The 17th installment of the always-incredible “Donuts Are Forever” party features a great community squad (incl. Fool's Gold’s Matthew Law and Makossa Cookout’s DJ Shinobi Shaw), and special guesting, from Detroit, the incomparable DJ Dez Andres. As always, it’s a benefit for Building Beats, a local music education initiative. Simply put, DAF is one of the best traditions in Brooklyn. (Sun 2/19, 8p @ Market Hotel 1140 Myrtle Ave., “Brooklyn Times Square” - $20)

This one snuck up on me: A rave with a monster bill at Elsewhere? Yup! “Hot Honey Sunday” is taking over all three rooms of the Bushwick mega-spot, and among the main attractions are the quiet Chicago house titan Mike Dunn and Bogota, Colombia’s Felipe Gordon, who has been making some of my favorite jazz-house tracks of the past 3-4 years. The rest of the bill — including RazorNTape’s Jkriv, London’s Shapeshifters and Hot Honey Sunday’s Deo'Jorge + Anna Collecta — is more than solid. (Sun. 2/19 10p @ Elsewhere 599 Johnson Ave. Bushwick - $28.77)

MUSIC-ART ALERT: A couple of weeks back I published a piece in Gothamist that hinted as to why the Museum of Modern Art exhibit “Just Above Midtown: Changing Space” is of importance as an example of music’s influence on contemporary art. And last week I recommended y’all to check out the live performances of Butch Morris conductions that Vernon Reid and Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber staged at MoMA. Now comes the Dada Strain hard sell: one of the central tenets of my project is to show the importance of “musicking in New York”; and even though JAM founder Linda Goode Bryant is primarily regarded as an art curator and artist (and NYC food activist), it is her role as a musicker, an enabler of new music and music-related spaces to blossom, that I love most about this show. The exhibit is a crucial history lesson in late-20th century contemporary Black American art and NYC culture, but it’s also a trip through some of the city’s 1970s and ‘80s musical ideas, including “loft jazz” and the Black Rock Coalition. There’s also a brand-new commissioned video by Arthur Jafa and Garrett Bradley that features footage of Bootsy’s Rubber Band that is absolutely killer! “Changing Space” is closing this weekend - don’t miss it! (runs thru Mon. 2/20 @ MoMA 11. W. 53rd St - $14-$25)